Flash or HTML: Which to Choose

      I am going to start with a short comparison between programming in HTML and Flash. I am sure that every websites developer asked himself at least once what would be best to choose in order to develop one certain website or more. Even in the early stages of learning websites programming, anyone can tell that there is a huge visual difference between those two. While HTML websites are static(excluding some javascripts commands to have a certain object move), Flash websites are all into animations, dynamic contents and a lot of interactivity with the users. The method that is chosen depends purely on the type of website being created and the goals of the website owner.
      Since every web browser in the world is designed to interpret HTML code and display web pages, building a site using strictly HTML ensures every web surfer will be able to view the site. Flash, on the other hand, requires users to have the Flash Player, which is a browser plug-in, installed on their computer in order to properly display the website. In addition, as Flash matures there are different versions of the Flash Player out there, further diminishing the chances that every visitor will be able to view the website.
      On the other hand, Flash offers some capabilities that simply cannot be matched using pure HTML code, such as animation, dynamic content generation and user interactivity. Much of this capability stems from the Actionscript, which is the scripting language used in the Flash environment. Actionscript allows for developers to create complex animations, incorporate streaming video and provide unparalleled interactivity. In recent years, Flash has also proven to be a leading method for providing streaming video content on the web, and continues to be the choice for developers who want to present complex and stunning visual presentation.
      Search-engine optimization is an important consideration if the website will rely on search engines to generate traffic. When looking at how a search engine will index a website, HTML offers the best choice. The reason is that search-engine spiders are designed to interpret and understand HTML code. In recent years, some search engines have made progress at indexing Flash content as well, although that can be deceiving for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that search engine spiders do not have the ability to run Actionscript code, which means that any dynamic content or Actionscript generated links, will not be indexed. The second reason relates to the way that search engines index and rank content.
Generally they would prefer to see content packaged in discrete, relevant units like the pages in an HTML website are. With a Flash site, all of the content appears to be in one file, causing content dilution in the search engines.
      As a personal opinion, i stoped using strictly HTML for creating a website. I am a fan of "good looking" and highly interactive sites, so when i have a chance to develop a website, i am more into programming with actionscript. There is a way that you can have both of them on the website, so this way your site will look more dynamic and also take advantage of the search-engine spiders (meaning you can still make full use of the html tags). The solution comes by implementing flash contents into your HTML website which can be done very easy. Here is an example of the source code that will have to be implemented in your HTML files.

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0" width="778" height="653">
<param name="movie" value="path_to_the_swf_file(your flash content)" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<embed src="path_to_the_swf_file(your flash content)" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="778" height="653"></embed>
</object>

      There is a certain matter that i would like to tell you about. I have been facing a dilema when trying to create an e-commerce website. Most of the e-commerce websited out there are still made using a combination of html, php running on an apache server and connected to a mysql database. This is the most common way to create a e-commerce website and there is plenty of informations on the internet on how to create one. I will not cover this on this post. If you are wondering how can you have a full flash e-commerce website, well, things are starting to get a little more complicated. You would still have to use a database connection with the website and you will still have to run it on a server. If you guys look on the www.adobe.com website you will find most of the informations you need on how to create such a website. The answer is Macromedia Coldfusion which is great to have your flash website connected to a mysql database. Take in consideration, that i am talking exclusively about developing a website on html or flash language. There are other programs you can use that rely on different methods to create a website, but i come back on this subject on a future post. If you take a look at www.ebay.com in camparison to a site like www.niketown.com, you will see an obvious difference. While Ebay is dull and static like we are all used to see, Niketown comes with a great visual advantage. But that compensates on the loading time of the website. Html will ALWAYS load faster on any user's machine. Flash will take more time to load, but it will have more class only because the dynamic contents.

      Here are 2 trick to have something that "moves" on your website without using flash at all
-

1.HTML Code For Scrolling Marquee

The HTML for scrolling text uses the marquee Tag as in the examples below.


Source
<marquee bgcolor="" width="100%" direction="left" loop="infinite" scrollamount="1">Scrolling Text</marquee>
Output
Scrolling Text
Source
<marquee bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="100%" direction="right" loop="infinite" scrollamount="2"><strong><font color="red">More Scrolling Text</font></strong></marquee>
Output
More Scrolling Text
Source
<marquee bgcolor="" width="100%" direction="left" loop="infinite" scrollamount="1">Scrolling <a href="8.shtml">Hyperlink</a></marquee>
Output
Scrolling Hyperlink

2.Gifs insertion

- using gifs (animated pictures) here is a link that will help you on this: http://www.3dtextmaker.com/image_editor.html. Feel free to check out the link. You should be able to include your gifs on many hosts.